Welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. Right at the top of the podcast, I want to take a moment to remind you that if you feel like you'd like to support all that goes on in these podcasts, you can go to the link below. I think it's in the show notes and click on that link and it'll tell you that we have basically four levels of support.
And depending on the level of contribution, there are loads of gifts, which we had a lot of fun putting together. They express our gratitude and they're like full book readings where I read the book personally, but then pause and give lots of stories, anecdotes that bring the chapter further to light. We also have beautiful artwork such as postcards, but even full size, like pretty high quality, very high quality prints done by the book's illustrator and of course, a signed copy of the book.
Now, you know, like if obviously if this is not financially possible for you right now, we totally understand, you know, right. But on with the episode now. In this episode, I wanted to touch on the theme of kids going through changes that really affect their behavior.
And it's like times of times of developmental change. There's lots of them, you know, the classic ones are around two or three, around seven, seven years old, around nine is a big one, 14 is another one, and so on. And in these times of change, like around seven is a classic, like, you know, you see kids being very mature, that happens at 14 to around 13, 14, 15, very, very mature.
And then almost, with all respect, almost baby like, I remember teaching, I think it was a second grade, and oh, gosh, they were being so mature, they're coming up eight, nine years old, and they were being so mature. And I thought, Oh, what a jolly good teacher am I, you know, I was quite proud of myself. And then they went out to lunch and they went over, they ran around in the recess field, pulling each other's pants down and baby talking.
I thought, Oh, I was a bit too quick on congratulating myself there. It's like this need, for example, this need for independence, but it's there's also sort of like a helplessness. It's wanting to have your voice heard and speak, but then not wanting to and being silent.
There's all these like wanting to be a part of things, and then wanting to be separate. And you see this kind of, it's almost like they get to a doorway, and you put one foot forward, and you look out into a new horizon. And then one step or two steps or three steps back, and you get this, you get this movement forward and back.
And some parents ask me, is that normal? Because it's really weird. And I think, yeah, yeah, it totally is. Your child is at a developmental threshold, they're really mature, and then really immature.
That's telling you something. There's a lot of brain development at this moment, at these moments of developmental growth. It's really interesting, having been a part of caring for family members, elderly family members with dementia, you see the picture in dementia of the brain diminishing.
And you see almost more and more actually quite beautiful at times, childlike presence of someone with dementia. But you, with a child, you see the brain growth. So it's almost like you see it in the picture of diminishing capacity, and then in growing capacity.
And there's times at either end of a human's life, where that can happen. The consciousness of this change, just being really conscious that for little kids, they're going to be very mature, very immature, really cooperative, really uncooperative. Just knowing that this is going on can really help us stay out of being reactive and taking it personally, maybe.
That's hard. But here's the thing, though, boundaries are also needed to help this flourishing brain development at these various stages of new growth. It helps the brain be released to develop.
Because if a child doesn't have boundaries, then they don't know who's in charge. They don't feel safe. And then there's a defaulting back to the brainstem.
And the brainstem will kind of get in the way. It'll interfere with development of the limbic system, the prefrontal cortex, all the other wraps of the brain, so, you know, the higher brain. And so we do need to be really consistent in our boundaries around this time.
It's almost like our kids are flailing backwards and forwards, and we need to be that pillar. Because if we start flailing too often, we become dysregulated with them. That is going to interfere with them feeling safe enough to step through the doorway.
If we're as centered as we can be when this is going on, and I don't say calm, that's gold medal standard, but at least centered, knowing, okay, they're doing this flip-flopping, I've got to stay fairly consistent, because then they're going to be able to do brainwise all they need to do and not have to have this amygdala hijack. Now, at this stage, they also, one of the other things I've noticed is that kids, when they're going through a developmental change, the way they view the world and the way they view adults around them is with much more consciousness, with a growing consciousness. They can start to play adults off against each other.
They become more aware of our biases, our vulnerabilities, our opinions, and they'll start to actually set us off against each other. Now, why do they do this? Well, because they can. They now have the ability to actually do this, and they're almost like playing with a developmental stage, and they don't mean to be manipulative.
I really don't think so. It's just that they're testing our leadership, because most of all, they need to stay safe. If you think about an infant, when they were very, very little, they were completely incapable of playing us off against each other, right? For example, they are just totally in the moment.
They don't have that ability. But when these developmental stages come and the sharpness of new consciousness comes, kids will play with that sharpness. I don't think there's any malicious intent.
I think part of it, as I mentioned, they do it because they can, but the main part of it is that they really want to know that they're safe to step through into that big new terrain, that horizon, that is not the stuff that they have come from. They were safe back there. They kind of knew the lie of the land there.
They don't know the lie of the land on the other side of the developmental stage. And so they push us quite a lot to make sure where they've got their base camp all set, and now they can journey out into that new land. So I hope this was helpful, because it's not easy when kids are doing this flip-flopping.
But I hope this has given a new little insight. And don't forget, please remember, if you want to contribute and keep these podcasts going, click on that show note link below with support the podcast. And gosh, every time we get a contribution in, we send out a little blessing.
Can't help it. Just do. Anyway, until next week.
Bye bye for now.
